I believe the whole point in opening a prime account is that you can actually do anything you want in any branch in any country in the world. Or isn't that what they advertise themselves to be when the talk about the 'world's local bank'? Anyway, I don't have an HSBC account, so what would I know?
Storm in a teacup. Invalid PIN and ATM problems? Well it got solved did'nt it? This OP is a drama queen. Journalists... True, this case she wrote here isn't the finest example of customer service. But at least the staff did tried to help her. (And try doing that with some faceless US bank, trust me, they would not give a shit.)
This really is nothing compared to the kind of "customer service" one deals with on a daily basis in Hong Kong.
Bottom line, I find it hard to imagine that HSBC would not notify this Anna if they made policy change for overseas banking. Maybe Anna isn't telling us everything. Maybe she just chucked that notification letter from HSBC down the bin without bothering to check what it actually wrote. Maybe she thought that letter was yet another advertisement for some useless credit card or financial product. Whatever the case, the onus is on her to read her bank's policies and notifications of changes. Caveat Emptor as they say...
Last edited by Watercooler; 15-04-2013 at 04:40 PM.
Worldwide access to your accounts only works for 'Advance' and up, not the standard account(s).
It's not the same because they are different legal entities with different regulations due to being in different countries and there is still a risk that the person on the phone line is impersonating HSBC staff.
I also do not think you can just walk into a branch here, call the phone banking (using the internal phone) and pass the phone to the teller to authenticate you just by his/her word. Might be interesting to try though.
However, they are getting better at this internationalisation stuff (speaking about Citibank, not HSBC), but still a long way to go. I can now view my "other country" accounts whilst online with one of them. I don't think all of the combinations work, yet, but integration is happening slowly but surely...
Storm in a tea cup as someone said above.
That the SCMP wasted so much ink printing this is a shame...
Yes I agree with GF, that blogger/author sounds like a drama queen, the fact that HSBC has been telling everyone for months, through mails, posts, and ATMs (every time I tried an HSBC or Hang Seng Bank), the message was clearly told...